Today EEF and Jelf Employee Benefits published the eleventh national sickness absence survey, the UK’s largest business survey on the issue.

Some of the key trends that emerged from the survey include:

• Absence rate of 2.1%, the lowest rate in eleven years of the survey.
• An average of 4.9 sickness absence days per employee per year.
• The average days lost to sickness absence has been fluctuating at around five days per employee (or a rate of 2.2%) for the past four years.
• Half of employees (50%) continue to have no absence because of sickness, which is a consistent story over the past three years.
• More than a third (36%) of companies say that long-term sickness absence has increased over the past two years and that the greatest cause of long-term sickness absence is recovery from surgery and time taken out for medical investigations and tests (31%).
• Two-fifths (39%) of firms do not set a sickness absence target. This is a similar proportion to that seen in previous EEF surveys. Of those that set a target in 2013, almost two-thirds (63%) achieved it.

Managing sickness absence

As we enter a period of growth, keeping people in work and getting people back to work is as important as ever. Employers have always understood the impact of absence upon their business but are increasingly recognising there is an opportunity to mitigate this impact with investment in protecting and promoting positive employee health.

This investment extends beyond a robust absence recording and management process as awareness must be complemented with action to achieve a successful outcome.

A robust absence recording and management process, while fundamental to measuring the core gains in isolation, is insufficient to deliver the available gains. We are unsurprised to see that a majority of survey respondents recognise the role of occupational health benefits in reducing absence and improving health but it is surprising that only a minority chooses to apply this understanding to the business.

We fully recognise that costs remain a determining factor but Jelf Employee Benefits continues to find that the lean resourcing required for global competitiveness places greater reliance on individuals and their performance. Accordingly, the direct and often more significant indirect costs of absence are becoming better understood, resulting in more employers wishing to provide health benefits. Insurers are responding to this opportunity by developing significantly lower cost products that target the employer rather than employee benefit. For example, private medical plans that provide cover solely for diagnosis, or only treat musculoskeletal conditions.

This focus on prevention must become a priority for UK employers, who need to maintain a competitive workforce within in an overall population that is both ageing and ailing. This is not only essential to tackle absence, but to also address the less easily identifiable issue of presenteeism (reduced job performance resulting from ill health) with 67% of people going to work when they are unwell*. This is fundamentally a wellbeing problem, with stress and musculoskeletal issues almost certainly mirrored as the main causes as with absenteeism.

Equally, insurers are responding to the need to shift expenditure from treatment to prevention by building an increasing sophisticated but easy to use range of wellbeing features in to their plans which offer employees information, education and paths to change. Jelf Employee Benefits is increasingly helping employers to promote and highlight these features as part of wellbeing initiatives and policies.

If you need support in developing your absence management policy, please get in touch:

Call 0370 218 6236
Email benefits@jelfgroup.com
Visit www.jelfgroup.com/wellbeingatwork

* Source: AXA PPP healthcare Research 2013